Quick note to say that the video book trailer for Leaving India, created by Amber Field, is now up online!
I’m very happy with how it turned out, and hope you enjoy it and enjoy sharing it.
me on YouTube!
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Tag Archives: desi
Cookies for everyone!
My two favorite cookies these days are from Arizmendi Bakery.
#1 The apricot almond cookie … it’s like a whole meal!
#2 The chocolate mint cookie … just crazy delicious and super-chocolatey.
(Yes, they’re vegan!)
Packaging a big baker’s box and sending around to yall. *Muah!*
Esoterica: Manga, Buddha, Brahmanism, Shramanism
I’ve now devoured and loved Volume 1 of the Buddha series by Osamu Tezuka. The manga is gorgeous of course, the story moves beautifully, and he incorporates an interesting critique of the Hindu caste system during the time of the Buddha. These days the four castes are sometimes described as priest, warrior, merchant, and laborer. But Tezuka is less euphemistic; he describes the Shudra caste as slaves, and the story depicts them being sold and treated like property, etc.
Coincidentally, I’m also reading a little book called Brahmanism, Buddhism, & Hinduism by Lal Mani Joshi. It’s more a pamphlet than a book, actually one longish essay, and sort of esoteric in one sense, but also deeply political and relevant in another sense. Let’s see if I can convey how so!
In brief: Conventional wisdom is that Buddhism arose as a reformist movement or reaction against/within Hinduism (Tezuka repeats this idea in the graphic novel version, by the way). Furthermore, mainstream Hindus tend to believe that Hinduism comes directly from the Vedas, a set of scriptures, and that these Vedas were brought to India by the Aryans of the north (lighter skinned, with written culture), who eventually subdued the “tribal” peoples (darker skinned, with oral cultures) that existed in a non-unified way across India.
OK. So Joshi argues against this. Instead, he lays out evidence that the roots of Buddhism are in indigenous, pre-Vedic practices in India. He puts these indigenous practices under the label “Shramanism,” which he contrasts with Vedic “Brahmanism.” He claims that Buddhism arose out of this Shramanism strand of Indian thought and belief. And he goes even further, saying that modern Hinduism owes just as much to Shramanism in general and Buddhism in particular as it does to the Vedas.
It’s a complicated debate and I can’t repeat all the textual and archeological evidence he cites here, but it’s definitely very interesting in its modern implications. That’s because basically, right-wing Hindus today are claiming that their version of religion, which is to say Brahmanism (aka “orthodox” Hinduism, which in my opinion is an oxymoron anyway, but that’s another story), arose directly out of Vedic culture and is the one true strand of Indian belief, with other religions such as Buddhism being merely reactions to Hinduism, and not containing much in the way of original philosophy. Muni’s argument directly goes against this hegemonic approach.
He argues that many of the elements of what is considered Hinduism today did not come from Aryan Vedic culture, but came from the indigenous Shramanism strand. He’s not here talking about rituals, esoteric tantric practices, etc., but about basic elements of Hinduism like the philosophy of transcendent liberation (moksha/nirvana); the practices of yoga and meditation; the idea of renunciation of worldly goods as a way or stage of life; etc. Anyway, by placing Buddhism within an alternate tradition that is just as old as anything in Hinduism, he’s really challenging the dominant view.
And this, in turn, is relevant to today’s caste system. (Which, legally, is supposed to not exist in India, but clearly does.) Although Buddhism started in India, it was absorbed by Hinduism to the point where there were almost no Buddhists left in India. It was during the pre-independence period that a freedom fighter named Dr. Ambedkar, who came from a so-called Untouchable (also known as Dalit, or Scheduled Caste) community, decided to convert to Buddhism because of its egalitarianism and anti-caste stance. Thousands of his people also converted en masse, and today most Buddhists in India come from these traditionally outcaste communities.
So, an argument that holds that Buddhism is original, indigenous, and deeply influential in mainstream Indian thought is also, almost de facto, an argument for the worth of these communities and a validation of their spiritual path.
That’s how I read it, anyway. And if you made it this far, you deserve a cookie. Or some good karma for your next lifetime.
Eat, sleep, rehearse
Last night Patty took me to Manzanita, a little macrobiotic place in Oakland. Yummy, in a totally unpretentious way. It’s the kind of food you’d cook at home if you were in a healthy mood and/or lived in a Berkeley commune. There’s just one menu each day (posted daily on the website), and depending on how hungry you are, you can choose between the “simple,” “moderate,” and “full” meals. We had ginger miso soup, curried hummus, a wild rice thing, stir-fried greens, and corn on the cob with ume paste (I might need to create a whole category for my blog entries with ume in them). I have been limiting my sugar to once or twice a week, so I splurged for the mini chocolate bundt cake with kahlua — super moist. All organic, all vegan! I do so love the Bay Area.
This morning I woke up way too early, couldn’t go back to sleep, and ended up doing yoga in my living room at 6 a.m. It’s actually supposed to be the perfect time, and I could sorta see why — very nice to do the sun salutation toward the rising sun. Not that I’m ever going to do it again, if I can help it, cuz I do love my sleep! Then I meditated for a bit, and for breakfast I made a delicious non-traditional breakfast taco — a homemade (not by me) corn tortilla with grilled zucchini slivers, japanese yam I had roasted and diced up, black beans, chopped fresh cilantro, and a dash of cayenne and salt. I laid down again — the post-yoga post-breakfast nap is really quite lovely. Woke up just in time to be just a little late to my bodywork session.
Afterward, I had a lovely mellow lunch at Park Chow. They make an awesome garden burger, although it’s annoying that you have to remember to ask not to get the weird white yogurt sauce. Why make a perfect vegan food into a non-vegan thing? It makes no sense.
Then I looked at my script for a while, got home, took out the trash, gave the cat a washcloth bath (you really wanted to know that, didn’t you? well, he was filthy), and took another nap to make up for not sleeping enough. I slept a lot harder than I expected, woke up at 5:56pm and FLEW out the door to make it to 6:30 rehearsal — whew.
Rehearsal was, well, whew! We were all supposed to be “off book” for our Act I “stumble-through,” meaning we went through the first half of the show all the way through without stopping. It was the first time I got to see all the scenes I’m not in, and wow, what an amazing talented cast! Of course, we also have our work cut out for us. All of us are definitely works in progress. Like a dork, I forgot to memorize a whole scene because I thought it was in the second act! Now that I can see where we are, I’m madly trying to clear my schedule for the next few weeks to cram in extra rehearsal and script time for myself.
Tomorrow: Sleep in (I hope), and rehearsal again. In between, who knows? Options:
a) do some work — oh yes, I do have SO much work to do. i MUST i MUST i MUST make my media & publicity list. I MUST!
b) enjoy the heat wave and go boogie boarding!
c) cook and fold laundry and do house stuff.
d) some combination of the above.
e) none of the above. Just wait and see what the day brings.
Tickets now on sale!
Come see me and a very talented cast in this brilliant, subversive, genderqueer show:
http://www.quproductions.com/projects.html
Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays Sept 18-Oct 4.
We did it!
I’m playing around with the blog templates in Movable Type. I kinda like these pink hills. I also kinda like that almost no one reads this blog right now, so I can do whatever I want. Someday soon I will have a real web designer who will make it look all spiffy… till then, I’m just goofing around. (Facebook friends: in case you’re super-confused, this paragraph refers to the actual blog at www.minalhajratwala.com/blog/ which is where I import these notes from.)
Wow. A full week after I shipped off the final-final-final manuscript, it has finally sunk in that the book is actually finished. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. and was writing in my journal, as I sometimes do in the middle of the night, and the words that came were, “We did it!”
By “we” I meant, of course, all the parts of myself — the journalist and the poet, the little artist child, the grownup disciplinarian, the critic, the productivity monster, the logistical brain, the nap-taker, the intuitive emotional self, the wise old crone… — selves who were often at war with one another, but eventually somehow all pulled together in the end.
And of course, “we” also includes my fabulous team of people who loved and supported me through the whole insane writing process.
Someday maybe I’ll write more about what it was like to write this book. I had no idea when I started that it occupy seven years of my life, and change me so profoundly.
But for now, I am doing as a friend suggested and trying to just stay with this feeling — to bask in the sensation of completion. BASK — what a great verb. Makes me think of sunny beaches, and palm trees, and margaritas.
Wow. We did it.
2 bizzy 2 blog
This was a busy busy week!
Last Saturday I did the film shoot for “Hey, Sailor” — six hours, sundress, cold drizzly SF night. Ah, the glamour of the acting life!
On Sunday I worked about 10 hours on my page proofs. (This, after a 12-hour day on Friday.) A couple more hours Monday morning, then I was done! This was the very last set of changes I get to make on my book before it goes to press.
George came over Monday morning and we went to the shipping store together. We watched our “baby” get weighed on the scale, and I made the guy box it up and tape it in front of me before leaving the store. Sigh! Then we went to Burma Superstar to celebrate. I had the veg samusa soup which sounds ridiculous (lentils PLUS falafel PLUS broken-up samusas??), but is delicious. (Hey lookie, I made a rhyme.)
We strolled over to Green Apple Books to look for a copy of BKS Iyengar‘s Light On Yoga book, because it’s a required text for her yoga class this fall at SJSU, but they didn’t have it. So we gave up and went home to take a three-hour nap. (“A three-hour nap….”)
On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday I worked at my magazine gig (Turning Wheel: A Journal of Socially Engaged Buddhism) and we got the pages out to the printers Thursday afternoon. Hoorah! Another project nearly wrapped up; we get the blue-lines back this coming week, and then that’s it. The magazine looks gorgeous, it’s a 92-page special anniversary issue, and it’s a bit sad that it’s only going out to members of the organization rather than newsstands. Such is the economy of small magazines, though! (The org, by the way, is the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, a totally great, progressive, and diverse organization, very worth joining if you’re interested.)
Also on Wednesday and Thursday nights I had rehearsal. I’d sort of forgotten how physical the work of performance can be. It seems like I’m just standing around saying lines, but somehow I’m a sweaty exhausted heap by the end of the evening! I am absolutely loving the work, though, and starting to get a deeper sense of my character, bond with the other cast & crew members, and get comfortable being in my performance body again. To do list: This week, memorize Act I. Next week, memorize Act II. Whew! Another rehearsal this afternoon.
After all that, yesterday I went to the Kabuki Springs with Zombie Mom. We had been trying to plan this excursion since her birthday back in February, but with both of our crazy schedules, here it is August! The timing couldn’t have been better for me, though, after this week. She’s a Pisces and I’m a Cancer so of course we both find it the absolutely most perfect way to spend a few hours — soak, steam, nap, soak, steam. There is something very satisfying about the kind of nap that happens in a steam room, or just outside it, when your body is all warm and relaxed and your brain is on vacation and you just kind of float away.
Ahhhh.
Then we went up into the Japantown Center for lunch. I love that there’s awesome vegan sushi available pretty much all over this city! I had a caterpillar roll — asparagus tempura & cucumber inside, avocado draped outside — as well as an ume roll (salty pickled plum!) and miso soup. Yummm.
And THEN we went shopping for the cutest of cute office supplies at the Kinokinuya Stationary store and Ichiban Kan, which is quite possibly my favorite little shop in the city. When I was writing the book, I used to go there for my ‘treat’ at least every few weeks — an awesome place to do some quick retail reward therapy for under five bucks. I got very cute folders, a notebook (cuz I always need notebooks) with little dots instead of lines in it, sticker tabs shaped like ducklings, and a set of half-sized index cards on a ring, which I’m going to use to help me memorize my lines.
Zombie Mom had to go back to work, but I had decided to take the day off (yay!), so I sat in the cutest little tea place and drank hot honey ginger tea. I am trying to drink soup and herbal tea as much as possible because all the rehearsing is getting to my throat, and it needs soothing. I also had some kind of delicious little sweet red bean bun thingie. All refreshed, I then had more shopping energy, so I went into the downstairs manga section of the Kinokinuya bookstore.
I browsed around for a while and then bought the first volume of the Buddha series by Osamu Tezuka, which I’ve been wanting to read! I decided that’s going to be my treat over the next few months… every time I do a big task, I get to buy a new volume. There are 8 total, so that should carry me for a while!
Came home, took 2nd nap until my cat woke me, jonesing for his dinner. Read Volume 1, it was beautiful and moving and funny and made me happy. Got back in bed, drew and wrote in my journal for a while, and went to sleep very satisfied with myself.
Today: Back to work! Class this morning (working on my business plan) — actually I’m late! — and rehearsal this afternoon.
Tomorrow, George and I are going to my god-daughter’s 2nd birthday party. Balloons, bubbles, and toddlers, oh my.
My genius friends, Part 1
Sometimes I get so happy just thinking about my friends! They are so amazing and wonderful. Here are a few of their genius blogs and websites.
- Kristy, editor extraordinaire, herbalist witch, writer/performer/all round creative being (hire her if you want to write!)
- Mary Anne, whom I can’t seem to stop bragging about in this blog
(Kristy and Mary Anne get top billing cuz they actually have read and commented on my blog! Ha!)
- Lisa, author of Oil on the Brain, which is the most entertaining book about oil you will ever read. We met in a crazy and short-lived Sundance Institute writers program, where we also got to meet John Cameron Mitchell, who was making his movie (based on his one-person show) Hedwig And The Angry Inch, which is one of my favorite movies ever. Sundance sent Lisa to Hungary, where the Hungarian filmmakers accused her of being a spy for (a) the CIA, or (b) Robert Redford. I went to Brazil, where no one accused me of anything. Little did they know… <evil laugh here>…
- My friend the zombie mommy who is anonymous in her blog but if you know me, you probably know her. She writes about her two adopted infants taking over her life, about totally changing her body and exercise habits, and about shopping. Her blog has gorgeous photos.
- Patty, my magazine colleague, a wonderful writer, co-editor of the Homelands anthology. Almost every day at work she tells me a hilarious true story. Today’s was about mice and Buddhists. Nuff said.
- Erika, who is now on a Fulbright in the Dominican Republic. She has the bestest curliest hair.
- Honor, author of several books, most recently the gorgeous and controversial memoir The Bishop’s Daughter. When she was on book tour this summer, she gave a sermon at Trinity Episcopal Church in SF that made me cry. I just found the notes I took: “I believe that the sexual sin operating in my father’s life was the communal sin of the closet. … Sin is what thwarts the natural in human life. … The society in which a sin occurs is complicit often in the sin.”
- Parijat, dancer & principal of the Parijat Desai Dance Company in NY. We met when we were 18 years old, in Feminist Studies 101! For my film and video class, I made a 10-minute documentary about the student dance company that Parijat formed as an undergrad. But I was a writer, not a filmmaker, so I put way too many words and not enough dancing in the film! Duh.
- Miriam and Crystal, my performance heros and mentors. I might have to do a whole separate blog entry about how awesome they are. We start rehearsals tomorrow!
- Leah Lakshmi, poet and performer, author of a poetry book called Consensual Genocide. She’s keynoting at the Femme Conference in Chicago this coming weekend, along with the amazing writer Dorothy Allison, and another fabulous woman I’m lucky to call a friend but who doesn’t right now have her own website as far as I know, Veronica C. Combs! (Tidbit: Sometimes LL wears bright green hot pants to yoga class. I have to make sure my mat is in front of hers so I don’t get too distracted.)
There are many many more, some of whom have websites and some don’t, all of whom are so fabulous I can hardly believe how lucky I am to know them. It makes me happy to post about people I love, so I will keep doing so from time to time!
Excitement and exhaustion
Lots of exciting things are happening with the book! The Amazon link for pre-orders is already up, which is pretty cool, although it doesn’t have the full info yet. I need to do a bunch of things including sign up for the ‘affiliates’ thingamingy for the online booksellers, put up a “buy” link on my home page, etc.
I just returned from the Unity journalists of color convention in Chicago, where I got to see Barack Obama speak. Obama seemed personable and charming, but he definitely has his schtick down after all these months of campaigning, so nothing very spontaneous or exciting happened. He’s clearly practiced at finding the middle-of-the-road answers. Still, it was nice to see him for myself since he’ll probably be our next president. I’ll vote for him, but I wasn’t quite moved enough to buy a t-shirt. Maybe a bumper sticker, though. 🙂
At the convention, the mood among newspaper folks was grim. Multiple rounds of layoffs mean that almost no book reviewers are left on staffs anywhere. But there are plenty of other media out there, and it seems like folks are quite interested in covering the book and/or me when it comes out. Advance media copies should be going out in the next month or so.
I did the schmoozing thing and remembered that when I was a student working for the student newspaper at a similar convention back in the early ’90s, I wrote an article called “The Art of Schmoozing.” Ha! I remember the article mainly because it was my chance to meet and interview one of my heroes, Helen Zia, who was then at Ms magazine and who had covered the Vincent Chin hate crime case in the 1980s. I had a chance to see Helen again briefly at the convention, and am happy that she’s now a friend. Of course the networking is really what conferences are about, more than the panels and workshops and such. This time the student journalists who cover the convention created not only an onsite newspaper but also television and online coverage (Unity News). All the talk was about convergence and multiple platforms, though I can’t help feeling that at most newspapers the efforts are a bit too little, too late.
While in Chicago, I also heard from my editor that the editor of a major publication is interested in excerpting the book. It would be really incredible if that comes true. I mean really, really incredible. Stay tuned!
Travel can be exhausting, and I was delayed an extra day in Chicago due to supposed “weather” problems– although the skies were clear in Chicago and my flight was routed through Las Vegas, which never has any weather, unless you count the artificial “snow room” in the spa at Caesar’s Palace. So I think “weather” was just an excuse so they didn’t have to give us any hotel or food vouchers. I was already so tired from getting too little sleep the previous nights that I almost cried when the airline woman suggested that if I didn’t want to pay for my own hotel room, I could just wait in the terminal overnight until the 5 a.m. flight. Sigh. So, eighty-five dollars and eight hours later…
George picked me up at SF airport and we went directly to the new Udupi Palace in the Mission District. Delicious dosa, much better than the pricey place half a block away, and just what I needed after a week of eating very random food in Chicago — a lovely city but not necessarily the best place to be vegan. Then we went to Osento, the women’s hot tub place that we’ve been going to for many years and that, sadly, is closing this week. It’s the end of a feminist era.
Slept in today, then went over to Amber’s to see the video trailer that she shot and edited for me — she did an incredible job! We made it at my publisher’s request so that they could have some video to show at a sales conference next week. Hoping to have it up online in the next day or two.
Happy to be home, about to crawl into my own bed for some zzzz’s.
I think I’m going to like this blogging thing.
Me, a blogger?
Until a month or so ago, I didn’t even have a cell phone. And now I have a blog! A thousand bows of gratitude to my friend Mary Anne Mohanraj, who said, “You need a website! It’ll just take an hour!” and put this one up for me today — in between taking care of her 14-month-old and revising the opening chapter of her own memoir. It took a bit more than an hour, but not much, because Mary Anne is a genius and a pro. In fact, according to the Online Diary History Project, Mary Anne’s blog is one of the five oldest personal journals on the internet.
Well hey, look at that, I even managed to make that a real live link, all by myself.
Anyway, I’m visiting Mary Anne while in Chicago to attend the Unity2008 journalism convention, which is the flashiest and most corporate journalism convention I’ve ever attended. The big media companies like Disney and CNN have huge high-tech booths with multiple flat-screens and fancy schwag, while the little regional newspaper booths cower in their shadows. But I guess someone’s gotta pay the bill for all those box lunches. Barack Obama is supposed to speak to us on Sunday morning.
More soon, or at least eventually!